Ryuichi Sakamoto: seeing sound, hearing time

Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) presents Ryuichi Sakamoto / seeing sound, hearing time, the first large-scale exhibition in Taipei devoted to the late composer, music producer, and artist Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952–2023). 

The exhibition looks back on Sakamoto’s groundbreaking artistic practice from the 2000s onward. It features seven large-scale installations, as well as selected archival materials from his 1999 opera LIFE, highlighting his long-term collaborations with five artists and art collectives: Shiro Takatani, Daito Manabe, Carsten Nicolai, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Zakkubalan. By tracing back Sakamoto’s reflections on time, life, the environment, and technology, the exhibition reveals how he developed new forms of expression and sensory experiences of sound, opening up different ways for us to listen to and feel the world. 

Internationally acclaimed as a musician, Ryuichi Sakamoto trained in classical piano and composition from childhood and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tokyo University of the Arts. In 1978, he formed the electronic music group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi (1952–2023), fusing electronic music with experimental soundscapes. In the 1980s, he expanded into film scoring, earning major international accolades, including an Oscar, a Grammy, and two Golden Globes. From the 1990s, he incorporated images and digital technology into his live performances, initiating collaborations with artists across disciplines. Beginning in 2000, he frequently presented installations in art museums and at art festivals, exploring how sound could be seen, heard and perceived. He also actively advocated for environmental protection and against nuclear power, integrating these stances into his sound works. Using field recordings, unconventional instruments, and technological data, he captured sounds that often go unnoticed in daily life.

Tracing the trajectory of Sakamoto’s experimental practice, “seeing sound, hearing time” illuminates how he transcended the boundaries between sound, image, light, and technology, transforming music into a spatial experience that can be seen and felt. The exhibition thus echoes his ceaseless inquiry into “installation music” in his later years. Interdisciplinary collaboration was at the core of Sakamoto’s work. He partnered for years with visual artists, filmmakers, and new media artists to create environments that merge auditory, visual, and bodily perceptions.  Each of the nine works across the seven installations unfolds through the sensation of the present moment, posing questions about space and time.

Alongside the installations, the exhibition displays a selection of rare archival materials from the 1999 opera LIFE, including notes, musical scores, manuscripts, videos, and audio tapes, along with documentary photographs taken at the time by photographer Mikiya Takimoto. Many of these materials are being publicly exhibited for the first time. In the archival area, visitors can look back at the conceptual origins of LIFE and Sakamoto’s explorations of linear time in music. Presenting archives alongside Sakamoto’s installation music offers a picture of his intellectual evolution from music to interdisciplinary art.

Ryuichi Sakamoto’s long-standing fascination with time found expression in the installations of his later years. He once remarked, “Music is an ‘art of time’ existing only in time.” He explored the non-linearity and asynchronicity of time, incorporating natural sounds, invisible sound waves from daily life, and audible noises into his work to investigate the essence of sound and the flow of time. The exhibition invites viewers not only to view the artworks within a “space,” but also to engage with them through their own bodies and senses within a set “time.” Visitors can experience multiple layers of time, from the time of the work itself, to the time of their own experience, to the time of the exhibition as a whole. Curated by Sachiko Namba, the exhibition encourages visitors to slow their pace and gain a fresh sense of how sound occupies space, how images trigger memory, and how the body experiences time in motion.